“In ten years, you'll be on a stamp /where anyone at all can lick you.”

“oil paints...the look of licked lips.”

“How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.”

“...the hearts gone bubonic with jealousy and greed, glinting through the vests and sweaters of anyone at all.”

“You think I'm not a goddess?Try me.This is a torch song.Touch me and you'll burn.”

“This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.”

“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”